


Zayde's Gift

by JewishDavidJacobs



Series: David & Judaism [1]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Antisemitism, Canon Era, Canon Jewish Character, Canon-Typical Antisemitism, Hurt/Comfort, Immigrants, Immigration & Emigration, Implied Javid, Judaism, M/M, davey gets beat up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewishDavidJacobs/pseuds/JewishDavidJacobs
Summary: When a bunch of boys from Davey’s class beat him up and steal the kippah his zayde gave him, he is forced to confront his memories, and the newsies are forced to confront the hatred he experiences every day.
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Series: David & Judaism [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703293
Comments: 10
Kudos: 117





	Zayde's Gift

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I started this series because it’s really disheartening to have a canon Jewish character with so little Jewish content and I want to share my heritage with you! I love what is out there, I just want more! Before you read, I just want to give you a few definitions for those of you who may not be familiar with some of the terms I used in this:
> 
> • Zayde = Grandfather (Yiddish)  
> • Bubbe = Grandmother (Yiddish)  
> • Ima = Mother (Hebrew)*  
> • Boychik = A term of endearment for a young boy or young man (Americanized Yiddish? Kinda? It’s used by Jews and it’s basically a mix of English and Russian but considered American Yiddish according to the internet? Idk. I was raised hearing it so I assumed it was Yiddish. Ignore me.)
> 
> *I probably should have been consistent and gone with Yiddish, but I call my mother Ima so there you go.

“What the hell happened to you?” David looked at Race with absolutely zero patience. It was pretty obvious what had happened. Race and Specs had had to catch him when he walked in and so it seemed like a pretty pointless question to him now. 

“What do you think?” 

“I  _ think _ you got the crap beat outta you,” said Specs.

“Got it in one,” he said, grimacing as Race lowered him onto the old couch. 

“I meant  _ who _ and  _ why.” _

“Classmates. Take a guess.” 

“I don’t - it’s Saturday!” 

“Obviously.” 

“What the hell does-”

“What’s going on in here?” They turned to see Jack in the doorway. Shit. Well, Davey guessed he had been very lucky to at least have only two of the boys downstairs when he came in. This was going to happen eventually - it was inevitable. “I’m serious, you’re louder than - Dave?” He stopped when his eyes landed on Davey. “What the fuck?” he asked softly, coming over and kneeling in front of the couch. “Who did this to you?”

“Jack…”

_ “Who, _ Dave?”

“His classmates.”

“Thanks, Specs. It’s not like he’s going to overreact or anything.” Specs just shrugged. 

“He was going to find out anyway.”

“Your classmates? But it’s a Saturday. What were you doing with classmates that hate you on a Saturday?”

“That’s what I said!” Race was practically pacing now. 

“I’m pretty sure they hate me every day,” Davey tried to joke, forcing a smile. Jack didn’t look happy. 

“Specs, would you-”

“On it boss,” he replied before Jack could finish and ran off to get a damp rag. 

“All right, you’re okay? Do you have any hurt ribs? You breathing all right?” 

“Yes,  _ Mom.” _

“Hey! This isn’t funny!”

“Yeah, Mouth. Don’t mess with Kelly once he’s in doctor mode. What hurts?” Specs came back and handed the rag to Jack, apparently not trusting Davey to clean himself up. Davey sighed and looked at his friends as Jack carefully cleaned the dirt and dried blood off his face. If he was honest, it was very nice to have people he could talk to about this sort of thing besides Sarah, and ones who cared, at that. He had almost not come to the lodging house, fearing his friends’ reactions. He wasn’t sure what he had been more afraid of: them freaking out or them not caring at all. 

“My right ankle. It’s swollen and hard to walk on. And I’m pretty sure at least one of my ribs is fractured.”

“Not broken though?” Jack asked. 

“Nah,” he shook his head. “That feels different.” Race raised an eyebrow at him. 

“How do you know that? Have them often?” Oops. Well, it wasn’t like most of the guys here hadn’t been in their fair share of scrapes. He shrugged. 

“Often enough. It’s been a while.”

“Right,” Jack huffed. “Anything else?”

“Not really. I might have sprained my left wrist but I also might not have; who’s to say?” Jack got up and sat on the rickety table in front of the couch. Slowly, carefully, he reached down and slipped Davey’s right shoe off and put the foot in his lap. 

“Jesus,” he heard Race whisper. 

“That’s gonna hurt for a while,” Specs commented unhelpfully. 

His ankle was swollen and wider than the rest of his foot. It was hot, red, and angry. David really wasn’t looking forward to the walk home later. 

“Specs, grab Romeo and run to the store for some ice? Get a nickel from my-”

“Nah,” Specs shook his head. “Don’t need it.”

Jack smiled halfheartedly. 

“Thanks.”

“No,” David protested, “I don’t need any ice.”

“Are you stupid or what?” Race said. “Stop being an idiot, Mouth; it don’t suit you.” 

“Fuck,” he hissed as Jack turned his foot slightly to get a better look. 

“Sorry. Just want to make sure it ain’t broken.” 

Romeo walked through with Specs without saying anything, which David was grateful for, but the same couldn’t be said for Mush, Finch, and JoJo as they wandered in. 

“Woah,” said Finch as Mush and JoJo made sounds of concern and shock. “Who did you piss off?”

“Yeah, Dave. Who?” Jack was clearly becoming impatient. “Tell us what happened.” 

He really didn’t want to get into it. Why should he? It had sucked. It had been painful, and scary, and unsurprising, and awful. Worst, it had been humiliating. He didn’t want his friends - many of whom had much tougher lives - to think that he couldn’t defend himself. And they knew, obviously, because they could see that. Still, he didn’t want them to know he didn’t hit back. He knew it was irrational and not at all their fault, but he was getting aggravated and rolled his eyes. 

“Take a wild guess, Jack! Where am I on Saturdays, hmm? Where would they have seen me?”

“You don’t mean…fuck,” Race said. He and JoJo exchanged looks, seemingly the only two who had caught on. 

“What? What does he mean?” Mush demanded.

“I  _ mean, _ they…” he considered lying but it was clear two of them already knew and it wasn’t worth it. “They saw me outside shul - synagogue, that is - and uh…yeah. Luckily for them I stayed behind to talk to someone so my family was gone by the time I left. I was alone.” They didn’t speak, but Jack put his hand down gently on his calf, urging him to continue. “So, a couple of guys from my class grabbed me about a block away and…yeah. You can guess the rest.” 

“Shit, Davey. Are you all right? Like, not just physically.”

“I’ll be fine, Mush,” he tried to assure his friend, smiling as best he could. “Thanks.”

“How many guys was it?” 

“Does it matter?”

“‘Course it does,” Jack said. “It ain’t a fair fight if it’s more than one against one and you already said it was.”

“It was five of them,” he sighed. “But it’s not a fight if you don’t hit back.” That got them all furious and yelling. 

_ “Five _ guys? And you didn’t even hit back?” Race yelled. 

“Jesus Christ, Dave!”

“Well, I think the point was that it  _ wasn’t _ Jesus Christ.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mouth, it ain’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“How can you be so casual about this?”

“Yeah, don’t you care?” 

“Of course I care, JoJo! There’s just nothing I can do. What’s done is done. Might as well laugh about it.”

“Whatever. Do you need ice?”

“Specs and Romeo went to get some,” Jack told them. “At least  _ someone _ is taking this seriously.” 

“You’re all overreacting,” Davey argued.

Jack scoffed. 

“And you’re dramatically underreacting,” Race countered. “You didn’t fight back! Why?”

Again, Davey was embarrassed. He knew his friends wouldn’t understand, try as they might. He sighed and told them anyway. 

“It…I wasn’t going to hit someone during Shabbat.”

“Umm…what’s Shabbat?” Mush asked shyly. 

“You know the Sabbath?”

Mush nodded. 

“It’s the Jewish version of that.”

“In fairness, Finch, the sabbath is the Christian version of Shabbat. We had it first,” he said, half joking, as he shifted the wrong way and groaned. 

“Dave, I got to see those ribs, all right? You’re gonna puncture a lung at this rate.”

He nodded and began to unbutton his shirt. 

“Mouth,” Race began gently, “I don’t think God would want you to not stick up for yourself, do you?”

“No, probably not,” he admitted, “but it’s my choice.”

“Even if God wants you to?”

“Yeah,” he said. “If He has a problem with that then whatever. History reflects He hasn’t really done anything about it,” he chuckled to himself.

_ “What? _ You’re saying ‘whatever’ to  _ God!” _ JoJo sounded appalled. 

“I mean, there’s nothing to do but say ‘whatever’ about it. One of my first memories is watching my father get hit with a bat because he was speaking to me in Yiddish in a non-Jewish neighborhood.”

_ “What?”  _ Mush exclaimed. 

“Some kids were playing stickball and ran up and whacked him in the stomach.”

“And he didn’t  _ do _ anything?”

“What was he gonna do? Hit a kid? No!”

“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically, “find the kids' parents and tell them!”

“There’s a not insignificant chance they wouldn’t have cared. Look, my point is that this kinda thing isn’t entirely unusual. Fighting back just makes it worse- trust me. Fuck!” 

“Sorry,” Jack mumbled. He had pressed a little too hard on Davey’s injured ribs. “Yeah, you were wrong; that’s definitely cracked. Two of ‘em, actually. Race, want to run upstairs and borrow some of that fabric Crutchie uses to wrap his leg? I’m sure he won’t mind.” Race saluted and ran to do just that. 

“You don’t have to-”

“Shut up, Dave.”

He did. JoJo still looked devastated. He couldn’t help but chuckle internally at the fact that he was the one who was hurt and his friend cared more - maybe there was something wrong with him? Oh well.

“Where’s your kippah?” Jack asked out of nowhere. 

“What?”

“The thing you wear on your head.”

“I know what it is,” he responded, rolling his eyes. “It’s uh…they took it.”

“They  _ took _ it?”

“Yeah. Said they were going to ‘keep it safe for me.’” He tried to sound nonchalant but if he didn’t want to talk about any of it, he really didn’t want to talk about that. That kippah had been given to him as a gift by his zayde before they left for America and it was his very first memory. His zayde was the one who had paid for them to go to New York, telling his parents only after he had bought the tickets. He refused to buy one for himself. He wanted to stay with his wife, David’s bubbe, who was buried nearby. David knew his parents would always feel guilty for leaving without him, and felt it had been their responsibility to care for him in his old age, but they really hadn’t had a choice. It was either stay and put their children in danger as well as Zayde, or leave Zayde behind and save their children. That was the last time David had ever seen him, as he had died less than a year later of old age. David didn’t know what happened when you died but he liked to think his zayde was watching over him. 

He remembered Ima laughing at him when he was younger and would put it on every Friday evening only to have to take it off again, as it was far too big.  _ “Not yet, boychik,” _ Ima would say.  _ “Not yet.”  _ It had been Zayde’s when he was much older, and he had even said when he had given it to David that he wouldn’t be able to use it for a long time, but he still wanted him to have it. He wore it for his bar mitzvah. It had still been a little too big at the time but it was passable, and he had worn it ever since. Now, it was gone forever. 

He felt his eyes fill up with water and avoided eye contact with his friends. Jack knew the story behind it, but David would still be ashamed to be seen crying by him. Jack had suffered a lot in life and David had never seen  _ him _ cry. 

“Davey…”

“Can we not talk about it?” he pleaded. 

“I’ll get it back for you.  _ We’ll _ get it back for you.” The other boys nodded. 

“No,” he shook his head adamantly. “You absolutely won’t. If a bunch of newsies come after them who do you think is gonna get blamed? Most of my teachers hate me already; I can’t get into any more trouble. No. I appreciate it though - sincerely. Besides,” he added when he saw the doubtful looks on their faces, “I’m sure they didn’t keep it. I’m sure,” he swallowed a lump in his throat, “I’m sure it’s destroyed.” He couldn’t stop it any longer and a tear rolled down his cheek. He quickly wiped it away, sniffling, but more followed. 

“It’s okay to cry, Mouth,” Mush said, sitting down next to him. “Ain’t none of us gonna mind.” They all nodded. He gave them a weak smile, embarrassed. 

“Anyway,” said Jack, sensing they should change the topic, “What’s your plan?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you gonna tell your ma? She ain’t gonna be happy.”

“She’s already going to be upset that I’m not home yet, so I can’t imagine this will add on too much.”

“I don’t mean she’ll be upset with  _ you.  _ Shit, Dave.”

“I know; I’m only joking. I hadn’t thought about it. This isn’t the first time I’m coming home with a black eye and a limp,” he explained. “But it’s the first time that I’m…yeah.”

Luckily, Race and Crutchie walked in and saved him from having to elaborate (not that Jack hadn’t known what he meant). Mush got up to let Crutchie sit. 

“I heard you’ve been pissing people off,” he smiled goofily. Davey laughed. 

“You could certainly say that.”

“Well knock it off! That’s Jack’s job.”

“Hey!” 

“Here you go,” Race tried to hand Jack the fabric but was intercepted by Davey, who snatched it. 

“Jacky, I love you, but please let Specs do it when he gets back.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he’s better at this stuff and you aren’t very…coordinated,” David tried to put it nicely. 

“Hey! Just ‘cause someone can do insane backflips doesn’t mean they’re better at wrapping shit. I can wrap this one’s leg,” he gestured at Crutchie.

_ “This one,” _ Crutchie said with a glare, “can wrap his own leg and usually does, thanks very much.” Jack shrugged. 

“Whatever.”

Out of pure coincidence, Specs and Romeo walked in right at that moment and saved them all from any further bickering between Jack and Crutchie. 

“Oh thank God,” Race said. “Specs, could you wrap Davey’s ribs? Jacky boy here wants to do it.”

“Good thing you didn’t let him,” he said, walking over and taking the fabric from Davey, nudging Jack away so he could sit across from his patient.

“You’re all ungrateful little bastards, you know that?”

“I’m grateful when you stop talking,” Crutchie argued and Jack smacked him on the back of the head jokingly. 

Davey groaned his way through Specs wrapping his ribs, and when he went to sigh in relief once it was over, he found it hard to breathe. 

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Specs told him, immediately sensing the issue. “Just take it off at night and try not to move around too much. Three days should do it.”

“Well, I can’t exactly not move around when I’m selling papes tomorrow but I’ll try my best. Thanks, Specs.”

“Happy to help. Now ice your ankle.”

Crutchie pulled Davey’s foot into his lap despite his protests and Romeo gently rested the ice on his ankle. Davey hissed at first but found it was actually quite nice to get some of the heat out of the area, even if it stung. 

“Thanks. I’ll pay you back tomorrow. Sorry I don’t have any money on me now.” Romeo waved him off. 

“Keep your money. That’s what friends are for.”

Davey was going to argue but he suddenly felt very sleepy, adrenaline wearing off, so he acquiesced, thanking them. His eyes started to slip shut and he tried to resist. 

“Sleep, Dave,” Jack said.

“I’m headed to Brooklyn so I’ll swing by your place and tell your folks where you are,” Race promised.

He thanked him sleepily. He was too tired to process that his tenement was completely out of Race’s way.

The last thing he remembered was a hand softly running through his hair, and seeing his zayde’s eyes when he closed his own. 

  
  
  


___________________________________________

  
  
  
  


The next Sunday, Davey found himself at the lodging house in the evening, laughing with his friends and trying to make sure Les didn’t accidentally kill himself running around indoors with some of the other younger boys. Katherine was there too and that was nice; he hadn’t seen her in weeks. She was exhausted from a long week of work and half asleep on Davey’s shoulder as a bunch of them crowded around, listening to Crutchie tell an embarrassing story about Jack that involved a terrible bet, a chicken, and Spot Conlon when Henry came in looking confused. 

“Henry!” Buttons called. “Where ya been all night?” 

“Had trouble selling the last of my papes and then Medda saw me on my way back and invited me in. By the way Jack, she says visit more often or she’ll hunt you down.” Everybody laughed at Jack as he grumbled, but Davey knew he was secretly appreciative of Medda calling on him like that, showing she cared. 

“What do you have there?” Katherine, the only one to have noticed the small piece of fabric crumpled in Henry’s hand, asked. Crazy reporter observational skills. 

“I’m not sure. Well, I mean, I think it’s a yarmulke? I saw it in an alley on Hester Street. I picked it up ‘cause it looked a mess and I didn’t want to be disrespectful or something.” Davey froze, and so did all the other boys who had been in the room the other day. 

“Let me see it,” he demanded. 

“Sure. I mean, ain’t much to see. Real dirty at this point. Think it’d been there a while,” he said, walking over and handing it to Davey. 

There it was. It was the soft, black, knit kippah he hadn’t stopped thinking about all week. It was wet, the white Star of David on top was a shade darker and had a dirt stain or two, and one part of it was a little frayed, but otherwise it was perfect. It was his. It was Zayde’s. He felt himself well up a little but couldn’t bring himself to care. Katherine, who didn’t know what was going on, saw he was emotional and began to rub his back in small circles. Jack got up and came over. When he saw it, he clapped Henry on the shoulder. 

“Thanks, kid.” 

“Um, sure? Is it yours, Dave?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to respond, but felt Henry deserved more than that. He cleared his throat. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s mine. It…it’s mine.” Suddenly, he shot up and enveloped Henry in a hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

“No problem, pal.” Henry sounded shocked and he couldn’t blame him. David wasn’t one to shy away from physical affection and the newsies were all pretty physically affectionate people, but he rarely initiated it with anyone outside of his family. 

“Can I…” he looked between Jack and Crutchie, hoping they’d understand. 

“‘Course, Dave,” Jack said and Crutchie nodded. 

David smiled, thanked them, and ran off. 

“What just happened?” he heard Henry whisper from behind him and smiled to himself. 

On the rooftop, he held the kippah to his chest and cried - violently. He didn’t know why, considering he was relieved and happier than he’d been in as long as he could remember. He was sure his mother would feel the same way. Of course, she hadn’t blamed David at all for what had happened, but it was still one of the last things they had of her father, and it was like a knife to the chest for her. He couldn’t wait to get home and tell her. But first, there was something he had to do. 

_ “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha'olam, ha'tov ve'ha'metiv, amen,” _ he prayed softly, almost in a whisper. Then, kissing his kippah and placing it on his head, he prayed again.  _ “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha'olam, todah she'at mazkirah li she'at iti tamid, amen.”  _

Smiling, David gave himself a moment to stand still, eyes closed, focusing only on the cool breeze around him on this chilled November night. 

Tomorrow, he would get up early and return to school just as he did each Monday. He would sit near the back and try to ignore the comments of the boys around him. He would try to focus and do his best work. He would leave school, exhausted, and pick up his brother so they could go work for the evening. He would go home and do his schoolwork until late at night or early in the morning. He would do it all again the next day. 

But for now, briefly, he allowed himself to be alone. Just himself and his zayde.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I’m working on more for this series and they should be coming soon. I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
